


thoughts in the dark

by drunkonwriting



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Character Study, Episode Reaction, F/M, Gen, episode coda, more platonic than romantic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-30
Updated: 2013-04-30
Packaged: 2017-12-09 23:20:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,469
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/779128
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drunkonwriting/pseuds/drunkonwriting
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>post-kissed by fire (3.05). gendry can't sleep and reflects: on the brotherhood, on arya, and on their future. not a lot of plot, just character introspection.</p>
            </blockquote>





	thoughts in the dark

**Author's Note:**

> i had overflowing gendry/arya feelings after last nights episode and this was born from them. it's pretty sloppy: i wrote it in 20 minutes and i never went back and edited it. apologies for mistakes.
> 
> this is more platonic gendry/arya because i honestly don't think gendry would view her in a romantic light until she was a bit older. it's also very gendry-centric. enjoy!
> 
> edit (06/02/13): made some minor edits that i should have before i posted. thanks for the kind reviews and the kudos!

Genry breathes long and deep, stares at cave walls. Around him, the Brotherhood sleeps and, except for the soft crackling of the fire and Anguy's rumbling snore, it is quiet. 

 

He sits up in the dark. Sleep doesn't come to him often anymore--after Harrenhal, he has nightmares. He keeps dreaming of rats eating him inside out, of being hung half-dead from the rafters of their makeshift prison, of Arya and Hot Pie dead next to him, blank eyes staring--

 

Gendry shudders, stares into the fire. He thinks of Beric, wielding that great, flaming blade and wishes violently for his own magic sword so he will never again be tied to a chair to confess to sins he didn't commit. So he will not know that fear of powerlessness which has slunk behind him on cat paws his entire life. Gendry isn't good at anything really, doesn't know much of anything beyond how to make a blade sing beneath his fingers, and it's steel that comforts him: the ring of it sends him to sleep, as good as any lullaby. He doesn't miss King's Landing or Harrenhal, doesn't miss either of his masters, but he misses the forge, misses the hammer that could mould the strongest iron into something new. Gendry is just a lowborn bastard boy, but he was higher than kings with a hammer in his hands. If he'd had a hammer, they would never have been able to take him at Harrenhal. 

 

He catches movement out of the corner of his eye, turns to see Arya twitching in her sleep, curled up as small as she can go in her dark corner, as far away from the rest of the men as she can manage. Distress furrows her brow and Gendry wonders what dreams she's having. She's seen the same things as him, seen worse, and sometimes Gendry can't believe she's a young, highborn lady from a castle in the snows of the North. He knows young lowborn girls from King's Landing, knows that some of them are tough as oak--but they had to be, to survive. It amazes him sometimes, the steel in Arya's spine that keeps her going, keeps her fighting with teeth bared, her small, sharp Needle in her hand. Gendry will never tell her, but he's pretty sure they wouldn't have survived without her. 

 

And now they're going to part. Arya will go back to her king brother and Gendry will stay here, with his new ones. Gendry may never see her again, never watch the cut of her eyes as she faces down men three times her size, her snarl when he makes fun, and the rare, surprised smiles, like she never expected to be happy enough to make them. She'll be gone. 

 

He misses Hot Pie too, in something of the same way: they'd made a group, the three of them, and it aches like a lost tooth to have one of them gone. When Arya leaves, it will just be Gendry again--he'll be alone, like he always has been. He will stay with the Brotherhood, and they'll be his family in the way he'd half-hoped the Watch would have been, but--it won't be the same. They don't know what he's seen, what's happened to him. Harrenhal is the clamp that binds him and Hot Pie and Arya together. 

 

Arya twitches in her sleep again, and her hand curls and uncurls, like she's reaching for something. Needle, probably. Gendry wonders where she got it--maybe one of her brothers. He's never seen a highborn lady wield a sword. Whenever ladies came into the shop, it was always with their lord husbands or fathers. He smiles a little: Arya was fiercely protective of her blade, but she wasn't very good with it yet. When they got out of Harrenhal, she used to do sets of sword technique before they slept--fluid, graceful movements that reminded Gendry more of dancing that sword-fighting. The Starks must be an odd family, to be so willing to let one of their daughters learn swordplay. 

 

He hopes that they'll find Arya another teacher when she comes back to them. He hopes that she's taught well, she grows lethal--because then she'll survive. Hot Pie is safe enough in his tucked away inn, away from the fighting, but Arya--she's a Stark. The Starks are traitors in the eyes of King Joffrey and the Lannisters, and her brother is rebelling against the crown. Arya will never be safe again when she goes back, in a different danger than Harrenhal or on the road. Worry gnaws at Gendry's stomach, but he pushes it aside as best he can. Arya will have her brother, her brother's men, and her Needle. She doesn't need a stupid bull to protect her to--she's proven more than once that she's more than adept at taking care of herself and Gendry too while she's at it.

 

He still doesn't want to leave her. He doesn't want her to leave him.

 

But he can't go with her. He can't go with her to her king brother and castles and go back to serving another noble who doesn't care about a lowborn bastard boy. Gendry knows Arya cares, but when she's back around the nobles, back to being a highborn lady and a princes . . . . He can see her interest in her bastard friend fading. Gendry doesn't think he could stand to be with her and have her never see him, overlook him. Arya's always noticed Gendry, been his friend from day one, and he doesn't want to think of them drifting apart. Better to make it quick, painless, concrete.

 

Arya shifts again, a tiny whimper escaping her. Gendry stifles the urge to go to her, wake her up. Arya wouldn't thank him for it, would probably only glare at him with her wolf eyes until he left her alone. Arya didn't like to seem weak or child-like, and she hated when she thought Gendry was patronizing her. 

 

He remembers her eyes before, the naked, vulnerable way she'd said, _"I could be your family."_   Arya could wield words like her sword when she wanted to sometimes--he'd been cut, straight down to the heart. 

 

But Arya knows. She _has_ to know: they wouldn't be family when she went back to her real one. She'd forget him, his highborn lady, and he'd be alone; a bastard among men, with only the smoke and heat of the forge to comfort him, his sweet singing blades to turn to. 

 

Arya sighs, her shoulders relax. Whatever dreams have troubled her, they're gone now. She looks younger as she relaxes, the girl that she should be instead of the wolf-woman she's so quickly becoming. He doesn't have to wonder what she'll be like when she's older: he can already see adulthood growing in her eyes, even if her body hasn't quite caught up. He wishes he could reach over and smooth away the lock of hair over her forehead--it's grown long enough that she'll have to chop it again, if she wants to look a boy. But then, she won't need to look a boy where she's going. She'll be Lady Arya Stark, Princess of the North.

 

His hands clench and he lays back down. What he said earlier, he meant it, all of it. But he saw how it hurt her, cut her down to the heart as surely as she'd cut him. He wishes he could have said it better, said something else that didn't make the hurt slink into her face, a dog whipped too many times to be mean back. They're friends, Arya is more important to him than--anyone, really. And she's been hurt too many times. Gendry doesn't want to become one of the people on her list. But he's no good with words--never has been. For Arya's sake, though, he wishes he could be.

 

He turns on his side so that he can see the curve of her shoulder. _We are family,_ he thinks to her, wishes so violently for her to know that he almost thinks she hears him. _You are more important to me than almost anything else. Please don't die in this war, this stupid noblemen's war. Live, Arya Stark. Then maybe, afterwards, we'll meet again._ He hopes that they can be friends again, after the war. That he'll do great deeds in battle, enough to make him a renowned Knight, someone worthy of consorting with a highborn lady. Until then, though, they will go their separate ways. And all he'll be able to do is pray to a God he's not sure he believes in that she'll survive without him there at her shoulder.

 

He sighs, closes his eyes. Sleep comes, slow and dark.

 

**end.**


End file.
